Compact fire escape

ABSTRACT

A fire escape in the form of a flexible mesh tube attached to a frame which is sized to permit passage of a human therethrough is provided. A rope extends at least partially through the tube and is contacted by a rope engaging member which is securable to a person in transit in the tube so as to guide his descent therein along the rope. Desirably, the tube is relatively small in cross-section but elastic, to frictionally engage the person descending therethrough to slow his descent. The fire escape tube telescopes to a compact package for storing next to a window in an upper story of a building.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

This invention relates to a tubular fire escape, particularly a flexibletubular fire escape.

2. The Prior Art

Flexible tubular fire escapes for tall buildings are known. See forexamples U.S. Pat. No. 3,348,630 to Yamamoto (1967), U.S. Pat. No.4,005,762 to Zephinie (1977) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,398,621 to Baker(1983). In the Yamamoto reference one descends in a constricted tubewith no rope to hang onto. In Zephinie, one descends in an elastic tubeholding onto a pre-tensioned ladder or cable which acts as an elevatorand Baker discloses a tubular mesh descent tube in which no internalrope is provided, as the user must descend by means of his handsengaging the mesh. Thus, of these references, only Zephinie provides aninternal cable and this is pre-tensioned around pulleys to act as anelevator. Such cable has a series of knots therein to be grabbed by theperson descending therewith, as shown in FIG. 9.

Accordingly, no flexible fire escape tube is provided having anuncomplicated guide filament therein by which controlled descent may bemade within such tube relative to such filament and tube and there is aneed and market for a fire escape tube that substantially overcomes theabove prior art shortcomings.

There has now been discovered a fire escape tube of uncomplexconstruction that permits controlled descent therein along a guidefilament and yet telescopes into a compact package for storing andquickly extends when needed e.g. out the window of a tall building.

SUMMARY

The invention will become more apparent from the following detailedSpecification and drawings in which:

FIG. 1 is an elevation view of the escape tube embodying the presentinvention;

FIG. 2 is a further elevation view of the escape tube of FIG. 1;

FIGS. 3, 4 and 5 are elevation views of another escape tube embodyingthe invention;

FIG. 6 is a sectional elevation view of the escape tube of FIGS. 1 and 2in use;

FIG. 7 is a fragmentary elevation view of another component of theescape tube of FIG. 6, and

FIGS. 8, 9 and 10 are fragmentary elevation views of a portion of theescape tube components of FIG. 6.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Referring in more detail to the drawings, escape assembly 10, has tube11 (e.g. of wire mesh in compact form) with rope or cable 14 therein,which tube and rope are both mounted to frame 18 for placement on andthrough window 12 of a tall building 15, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. Whena fire is detected, the window 12 is opened, the escape frame 18 ispositioned against the open window and the tube 11 is pushed out thewindow 12 where it and its interior cable 14 de-telescope or fall towardthe ground (or other support surface), as shown in FIG. 2. The rope orcable 14 within the tube 11, falls toward the ground with it and servesas a hand-hold for the user of such chute or tube 11 in escaping from abuilding.

The frame 18 can have tabs 9 which engages the window sides anddesirably rests on the sill thereof and has legs 19 and a tab 17 whichengage the top and bottom of the open window so as to anchor the frame18 in place per FIGS. 1 and 2.

In another embodiment, an oblong frame 20 having projecting arc 22, ropecoil 24 and rope 25 mounted on spindle 23, along with feet 26 and 28 andoutside feet 29 and arms 30 and 32, is mounted in window 34, as shown inFIGS. 3, 4 and 5. The tube mesh 36 is attached to the frame 20 and thetube 36 and interior rope 25 lower from the window 34, as shown in FIGS.3, 4 and 5. Additionally, a landing pad 38 can be attached to the lowerportion of the rope 25, as shown in FIG. 5. A table 40 shown in FIG. 3,can be positioned proximate the window 34 to assist entry into the frame20, as desired.

In a further embodiment, the tube upon being lowered toward the groundcontracts in cross-section to form a friction fit with the user 13 whomay descend, holding the rope 25 e.g. per FIG. 6, the friction fitslowing the descent of the user 13 as does his grip on the interior ropeor cable 25.

Alternatively, the chute or tube 10 can be sufficiently large indiameter relative to the person descending therein so that little or nofriction fit occurs and he descends hand over hand on the rope 25.

However, the friction fit model is the preferred embodiment,particularly for those people who are less athletic or those who feelsafer descending in a close fitting tube.

To further enchance the descent of the user, a rope or cable engagingelement 42 can be provided which engages the rope or cable 25 and alsothe clothing of the user e.g. his belt 44, e.g. the threaded portion 43[ofr, due to the biasing force of the spring 86. Because this rotationof the movable contactor 81 starts from the position where the lower endof the contactor 81 abuts against the supporting projection 32 providedon the front face of the base of the smaller partition 26, that is, froma position in which the movable contact 81 is preliminarily advanced inthe clockwise direction, the necessary electromagnetic force forstarting the rotation can be reduced. Provided that the supportingprojection 32 is absent, such a relatively high electromagnetic force asshown by a dotted-line curve in FIG. 10 is required to drive the movablecore 44. According to the foregoing arrangement, however, the movablecore 44 can be driven with such a relatively low electromagnetic forceas shown by the curve EFF. That is, during contact closing operation, asshown in FIG. 11, the movable contactor 81 is resiliently biased to abutat its central part against the supporting projections 72 on both sidesof the engaging projection 71 of the rocker 61 and also at its upperpart against the upper part of the rocker 61, preferably, at itsprojection 73 formed thereon to be above the pivot pin 64, so that theprojection 46 of the movable core 44 will receive substantially noreverse biasing force of the spring 86 during the forward motion of themovable core 44, as will be clear from FIG. 10. When the movablecontactor 81 has reached the contact closed state of FIGS. 1 and 6, thecontactor 81 engages its movable contact 84 with the fixed contact 87 ofthe fixed contactor 82, as so biased by the spring 86. That is, as themovable projection 46 further moves forward, the upper part of therocker 61 rotates to separate from the upper part of the movablecontactor 81, as seen in FIG. 1, whereupon the biasing force of thespring 86 is fully activated to rotate the movable contactor 81clockwise about the projections 72 on the rocker 61 as the fulcrum,providing thus effectively a contacting pressure to the both contacts 84and 87. With such an arrangement, the contactor-biasing spring 86 canprovide the effective contacting pressure, substantially without anyadverse action on the forward motion of the movable core 44, so that themain contact means 14 can be actuated to close the contacts with a lowerelectromagnetic force and, in this respect, too, the requiredelectromagnetic force can be reduced.

Energization of the coil 43 of the electromagnet means 12 is carried outby means of the power supply circuit of FIGS. 8 and 9 through theauxiliary contact means 15. In the illustrated embodiment, the powersupply circuit comprises an operating circuit OC including a transformerT for reducing a power source voltage normally to 24 V, and a remotecontrol switch RS. When a current flows in a direction shown by an arrowI₁ as in FIG. 9 from the operating circuit OC in response to anactuation of the remote control switch RS in the operating circuit OC, adirect current will flow through the auxiliary terminal plate 110, adiode D₁ incorporated in the printed circuit board 106, auxiliary fixedcontact spring 103b, auxiliary movable contact plate 105, coil 43 andauxiliary terminal plate 108, whereby the forward side armature 48a ismagnetized to be N-pole. In this case, a series circuit of a parallelcircuit of a resistor R₁ and capacitor C and of a resistor R₂ andconnected between the pair of auxiliary fixed contact springs 103a and103b, as incorporated in the printed circuit board 106, absorbs anysurge voltage to thereby prevent any malfunction.

Upon the energization of the coil 43 of the electromagnet means 12 forclosing the main switching contact means 14 seen in FIG. 1, theclockwise rocking of the rocker 61 causes the free end 70 of theactuating arm 67 to rotate downwardly backward, the auxiliary movablecontact spring 104a of the auxiliary movable contact plate 105 anddisposed above the free end 70 is thereby released form the free end 70so as to come into contact with the opposing auxiliary fixed contactspring 103a, while the other auxiliary movable contact spring 104b ishit be the rotated free end 70 to be separated from the opposingauxiliary fixed contact spring 103b. In this arrangement, the free end70 of the actuating arm 67 is made to act on the tip end of therespective auxiliary movable contact springs which are provided with arelatively high resiliency, and the contact switching time of theauxiliary movable contact springs 104a and 104b with respect to theauxiliary fixed contact springs 103a and 103b is thereby caused to besomewhat delayed from the closing time of the main switching contactmeans 14. Accordingly, the energization of the coil 43 will be continuedfor a short time after the closing of the main switching contact means14 so that the movable core 44 can be sufficiently driven until themovable contactor 81 positively shifts to the closed position. While theuse of such auxiliary contact means 15 enables it possible to ensure thereliable operation of the movable core 44, it is also made possible tooperate the core in a relatively short time and thus to remarkablyreduce the consumed power.

An ocurrence of such a large short-circuit current as to be, forexample, above 1500 A in the closed state as has been described of themain switching contact means 14 may happen to cause the means to beforcibly opened due to an electromagnetic repulsive force generatedheretofore between the movable and fixed contactors 81 and 82. Accordingto the present invention, however, such forcible contact opening evenupon a larger current of specifically more than 2500 A can be prevented.That is, as shown in FIG. 12, a flow of the short-circuit current in adirection shown by an arrow from the fixed contactor 82 to the movablecontactor 81 causes an electromagnetic force to be produced in theelectromagnetic iron piece 88 at the base of the fixed contactor 82, andthis electromagnetic force acts to attract the electromagnetic ironpiece 85 at the lower end of the movable contactor 81. Futher, as thefixed terminal plate 89 is bent into an L-shape to just shortly extendupward on the bottom wall of the body 21 and to oppose only the lowerend portion of the movable contactor 81, it is made possible to minimizeeffectively the extent of opposite directional flow of the currentthrough the opposing portions of the both contactors 81 and 82 toprevent enough generation of the electromagnetic repulsive force for theforcible opening of the contacts.

In switching over the main contact means 14 from the closed state ofFIG. 1 to the opened state of FIG. 2, a current is fed to the coil 43 inthe opposite direction to that in closing the means, such as shown by anarrow I₂ in FIG. 8, whereupon a direct current flows through theauxiliary terminal plate 108, coil 43, auxiliary movable contactt plate105, auxiliary fixed contact spring 103a, a diode D₂ incorporated in theprinted circuit board 106, and auxiliary terminal plate 110 to generatesuch an electromagnetic force larger than the magnetic force MF of thepermanent magnets 51a and 51b as shown by a curve ERF in FIG. 10. Thebackward side armature 48b is magnetized through the yokes 50a and 50bto be, for example, N-pole as shown in FIG. 6, and the movable core 44is driven backward to retreat from the position of FIG. 6 to that ofFIG. 7 where the backward side armature 48b is attracted to the backwardside ends of the yokes 49a and 49b as spaced therefrom by the thicknessof the residual plate 52b, with the movable projection 46 of the corelikewise backward retreated.

Accompanying the backward retraction of the movable projection 46, therocker 61 linked thereto is rotated counterclockwise in the drawings sothat the switching-contact operating means 13, main switching contactmeans 14 and auxiliary contact means 15 are all actuated substantiallyin opposite manner to the foregoing case of closing the main switchingcontact means 14, and the closed state of FIG. 2 is reached from theopened state of FIG. 1.

In an event where the contact opening operation is confronted with afusion bonding between the movable and fixed contacts 84 and 87 of theboth contactors 81 and 82 due to any large current, there will beproduced according to the present invention a force acting positively toseparate the movable contact 84 from the fixed contact 87. That is, inthe opening operation of the main switching contact means 14, suchfusion bonding took place between the movable and fixed contacts 84 and87 causes the lower end of the movable contactor 81 not to separate fromthe fixed contact 87 upon starting of the backward motion of movableprojection 46 and even when the supporting projections 72 of the thusrotated rocker 61 separate from the movable contactor 81. During thisrocking motion of the rocker 61, on the other hand, the projection 73 atthe upper part of the rocker comes into engagement with the upper end ofthe movable contactor 81 counterclockwise so as to compress the spring86 through the contactor 81, and the thus compressed spring 86 acts onthe contactor 81 with the projection 73 as the fulcrum to urge thecontactor 81 to separate from the fixed contact 82. Even when theseparation is still not achieved by the spring 86, the rocker 61 keepingto rock counterclockwise causes the backward end edge of the lower wall68 defining the small holding chamber 66 of the rocker 61 to hit uponthe forward side surface of the movable contactor 81 as shown in FIG. 14so as to provide a backward force to the contactor 81 in addition of thebiasing force of the spring 86, whereby the lower end of the movablecontactor 81 is forcibly separated from the fixed contactor 82, so thatthe fusion bonded contacts 84 and 87 can be ensured to be reliablyseparated.

In the remote controllable relay of the present invention, further, thetop indicating part 65 of the rocker 61 is opposed to the top wallaperture 29 of the body 21 as has been disclosed, for indicating ON andOFF states of the relay depending on the rocked positions of the rocker61. Taking the advantage of this arrangement, it is possible toexternally operate the contact means 14 by manually operating theindicating part 65 through the aperture 29.

In the foregoing relay 10, in addition to that the electromagnet means12 is assembled into a block, it will be appreciated that the operatingmeans 13, movable contactor 81 and auxiliary contact means 15 can bealso easily assembled into a block, so as to remarkably improve theassembling ability of the entire relay construction.

In another aspect of the present invention, a plurality of the remotelycontrollable relays are assembled into a single relay unit, so that anumber of loads can be integrally, concentratively controlled. Referringto FIGS. 15 and 16, an example in which the relay unit comprises tworelays 210a and 210b is shown. The first relay 210a is substantially ofthe same arrangement as the relay 10 that has been disclosed withreference to FIGS. 1 to 14, and is joined with the second relay 210b ina state of omitting the covering 22 of the relay 10. The second relay210b comprises only the switch operating means 13 and main switchingcontact means 14 in the relay 10 of FIGS. 1 to 14. While not shown, alinking shaft is secured to a linking part 74 of the rocker 61 (FIG. 5)in the switch operating means 13 of each of the first and second relays210a and 210b so as to extend across the both relays, so that the rockerin the second relay 210b will be interlocked with the rocker 61 in thefirst relay 210a and the respective main switching contact means 14 ofthe first and second relays 210a and 210b can be simultaneously operatedthrough the linking shaft, whereby the power source circuits connectedto the plurality of loads can be turned ON and OFF simultaneously.Though the two relays 210a and 210b have been shown as employed in thearrangement of FIGS. 15 and 16, a plurality of the relays of the samearrangement as the second relay unit 210b may be used to form a singlerelay unit, in which event the final stage relay is covered by acovering 222 similar to the covering 22 in the foregoing embodiment, andan elongated linking shaft is used to integralize the plurality of therelays into a single relay unit.

What is claimed as our invention is:
 1. A remotely controllable relaycomprising an electromagnet means having a coil arranged for feedingthereto an energizing current in opposite directions and a movablemember coupled to a core reciprocatingly movable along the axialdirections of said coil, said movable member being a movable projectionintegral with said movable core for forward and backward motiontherewith on one side of said electromagnet means in said axialdirection of said coil; a rocker, pivotally supported to a coil frame ofsaid electromagnetic means and pivotally connected to said moveableprojection of said moveable core at one end portion remote from saidpivotally, supported position, linked to said movable member to berocked forward and backward in response to said reciprocating movementof said core; a movable contactor electrically connected to a load andlinked to said rocker for following said rocking of said rocker, and afixed contactor electrically connected to said load, said rocker,movable, and fixed contactors being disposed on one side of theelectromagnet means, said movable contactor following the rocking of therocker; an auxiliary contact means actuable with said rocking of saidrocker for cutting said current fed to said electromagnetic means, saidrocker forming part of a switching-contact operator means which includesa small holding chamber provided on one side of said rocker opposite tosaid coil frame, said chamber including an opening for passingtherethrough said movable contactor, and a biasing spring disposed insaid chamber for providing to said movable contactor a contactingpressure with respect to said fixed contactor and said movable memberbeing shifted in one of said axial direction of the coil in reponse tosaid current feeding direction to said electromagnet means to turn ONand OFF as associated power source circuit for said load.
 2. A relayaccording to claim 1, which further comprises a casing defining thereina larger compartment for housing said electromagnet means and a smallercompartment housing said switching-contact operating means and mainswitching contact means, said casing having a projection for supportingsaid movable contactor operated to separate from said fixed contactor ata position diviated toward the fixed contactor from a completelyseparated position following said movable projection.
 3. A relayaccording to claim 2, wherein said auxiliary contact means is disposedin said larger compartment with said electromagnet means to be operatedby said rocker rocked for cutting said current fed to said electromagnetmeans.
 4. A relay according to claim 2, which further comprises a switchprovided in said casing on the side opposite to said smaller compartmentfor detecting the operating state of said main switching contact means,said switch being actuatable through a pushing projection integrallyprovided to said movable core opposite to said movable projection inresponse to said reciprocating movement of the core.
 5. A relayaccording to claim 1, wherein said fixed contactor is provided to bepartly opposed to a limited, opposed part of said movable contactor, andsaid opposing parts of said fixed and movable contactors formrespectively a means for electromagnetically attracting each other.
 6. Arelay according to claim 1, which further comprises at least anassociated relay comprising only components forming saidswitching-contact operating means and main switching contact means, arocker in said operating means of said associated relay beinginterlocked to said rocker of said relay for simultaneous rockingtherewith.